There is an eXtreme Programming revival rising wave in the wake of the Software Craftsmanship tide. I do think this is great news, as coding practices and tools were put in a closet by most of the firms that went Agile the Scrum way. But, XP is not Scrum + Software Craftmanship, this simple arithmetic does not reflect the specific attributes of those ideas.
I do think that XP is the best project methodology bar none, assuming that:
- you really have an available user
- you will actually put your deliverables in production
- the project can be executed by 5-7 experienced developers
Looking at them, those criteria are success factors for many projects, whatever the methodology. Nonetheless, those are pretty restricting constraints; but the further you are from this ideal setup, the more likely you will encounter issues during the project.
Why do I mention that? Because despite all the love I have for XP, or maybe because of that, I understand its limitations. As the saying goes: with great powers come great responsibilities.
So use XP responsibly.
Don’t expect it to scale, nor to tolerate weaker environment/sponsorship.
Or even better, find and try ways to adapt WP practices for a different environment, and please, share your findings.
Many Cores 
Interesting. But I think it worth that you describe more the:
” XP is not Scrum + Software Craftmanship, this simple arithmetic does not reflect the specific attributes of those ideas.”
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Thanks. I just did that in a specific new post!
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Hi,
XP does work – but I do think that it’s a bit exaggerated and it only works when both persons are experienced developers.
It’s sad to see its usage dwindling though, and I’m not very sure about the revival.
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For what it’s worth, it is based on pesonnal observations as well as first hand experience. Being in a very large organization offers me a significantnumber of experiments, albeit from a single culture, granted.
I can rephrase that statement as: it is the best way to execute a project when you have a handful of experienced developpers.
I think the industry is ready to consider XP again. But XP needs to evolve as well, it is roughly 15 years old and the IT ecosphere has gone through several phases since.
I did elaborate on that in my follow up.
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